Playing Style Reinforcement

Intent

By applying slow, positive, constructive feedback on player actions, the
game encourages specialization and gradually adapts to the player’s preferred playing
style.

Also Known As

Role-playing game (RPG) elements.

Motivation

Slow, positive, constructive feedback on player actions (actions that
have another effect on the game) causes the player’s avatar or units to develop over
time. As the actions themselves feed back into this mechanism, the avatar or units
specialize over time, getting better at performing a particular task. As long as there
are multiple viable strategies and specializations, the avatar and the units will, in
time, reflect the player’s preferences and style.

Applicability

Use playing style reinforcement when:

You want players to make a long-term investment in the game that spans multiple play sessions.

You want to reward players for building, planning ahead, and developing personal strategies.

You want players to grow into a specific role or strategy.

Structure

Participants

Actions players can perform whose success depends in part on the attributes of the player’s character or the units involved in the action.

A resource ability that affects the chance that actions succeed and that can grow over time.

An optional resource experience points that can be used to increase an ability. Some games call these skill points and include a different resource called experience points that cannot be traded.

Consequences

Playing style reinforcement works best in games that are played over multiple sessions
and over a long time.

Playing style reinforcement works well only when multiple strategies and play styles
are viable options in the game. When there is only one, or only a few, all the players
will use the same strategy, which makes the game uninteresting.

Playing style reinforcement can inspire min-maxing behavior with players. This
refers to a strategy in which players seek the best possible options that will allow
them to gain powerful avatars or units as fast as possible. If min-maxing is successful,
it usually becomes a dominant strategy. This can happen when the strength of
the feedback is not distributed evenly over all actions and strategies.

Playing style reinforcement favors experienced players over inexperienced players,
because the experienced ones will have a better understanding of their options and
the long-term consequences of their actions.

Playing style reinforcement rewards the player who can invest the most time in
playing the game. In this case, time spent playing can compensate for different levels
of skill among players, which can be a wanted or an unwanted side-effect.

It can be ineffective for a player to change strategies over time in a game with
playing style reinforcement, because the player will lose the benefit of previous
investments in another play style.

Implementation

Whether or not to use experience points is an important decision when implementing
play style reinforcement. When using experience points, there is no direct
coupling between growth and action, allowing the player to harvest experience
with one strategy to develop the skills to excel in another strategy. On the other
hand, if you do not use experience points, you have to make sure that the feedback
is balanced for the frequency of the actions; actions that are performed more often
should have weaker feedback than actions that can be practiced infrequently.

Role-playing games are the quintessential example of games built around the play
style reinforcement pattern. In these games, the feedback loops are generally quite
slow and balanced by an Escalating Challenge, Dynamic Friction, or a Stopping Mechanism
to make sure avatars do not progress too fast. In fact, most of these games are balanced
in such a way that progression is initially fast and gradually slows down, usually
because the required investment of experience points increases exponentially.

You must also decide whether the action needs to be executed successfully to generate
the feedback. How you decide this issue can dramatically affect player behavior.
When success is required, the feedback loop gains influence. In that case, it is probably
best to have the difficulty of the player’s tasks also affect the success of an action
and to challenge the player with tasks of varying difficulty levels, thus allowing
them to train their avatars. When success is not required to earn experience points,
players have more options to improve neglected abilities during later and more difficult
stages. However, it might also encourage players to perform a particular action
at every conceivable opportunity, which could lead to some unintended, unrealistic,
or comic results, especially when the action involves little risk.

Examples

Many pen-and-paper role-playing games implement playing-style reinforcement.
For example, in Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play and Vampire: The Masquerade, players
are awarded experience points for achieving goals in the game. They can spend
experience points on improving their character’s abilities. Curiously, the original
role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t have playing-style reinforcement. In
Dungeons & Dragons, players are awarded experience points that they need to accumulate
to advance to the next level. However, the player has no influence over how
her character’s abilities improve when she levels up; the character’s abilities do not
adapt to the playing style or preferences of the player.

In the computer role-playing game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the avatar’s progress
is directly tied to her actions. The avatar’s ability corresponds directly to the number
of times she has performed the associated actions. Oblivion implements playing-style
reinforcement without experience points.

In Civilization III, there are different ways in which a player can win the game. A
player reinforces his chosen strategy of military, economic, cultural, or scientific
dominance (or any combination) by building city improvements and wonders of
the world that favor that strategy. In Civilization III, several resources take the role of
experience points; money and production are prominent examples. These resources
are not necessarily tied to one particular strategy in the game. Money generated by
one city can be spent to improve production in another city in the game.

In the board game Blood Bowl players coach football teams in a fantasy setting. Individual team members score 'star player points' for successful actions: scoring touch downs, throwing complete passes or injuring opposing players. When a team member collected enough star player points he gains new or improved abilities. Many of these increase their ability to score, pass or injure opponents. Improvements occur only between matches and players build up a team over a long series of matches. Blood Bowl facilitates a wide variety of playing styles that generally fall somewhere between two poles: agility play with a strong focus on ball handling and scoring, and strength play with a strong focus on taking out the opposition in order to win the game.

Related Patterns

When playing style reinforcement depends on the success of actions, it creates a
powerful feedback. In that case, a Stopping Mechanism is often used to increase the
price of new upgrades to an ability.